{"id":1131,"date":"2026-06-01T11:22:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T16:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lupinestudios.com\/staging\/1428\/?post_type=portfolio&p=1131"},"modified":"2026-08-10T08:26:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T13:26:45","slug":"hidden-lives-of-stars","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/lupinestudios.com\/staging\/1428\/portfolio\/hidden-lives-of-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Hidden Lives of Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Exhibit<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hidden Lives of Stars invites visitors into the full arc of a star’s life, from swirling nebulae to the planetary systems they shape. At UNC’s Morehead Planetarium and Science Center, the interactive exhibit puts real research tools in visitors’ hands: space-based telescope simulations, light experiments, and stellar phenomena they can trigger themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lupine’s role was the complete graphic environment: interpretive panels, data visualizations, and vast, immersive murals. Every piece was designed to work in close dialogue with the architecture and physical interactives built by One Bit Design<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rooted in Real Research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This exhibit didn’t pull from textbooks. It was built on active science happening two miles away, inside UNC Chapel Hill’s Young Worlds Lab, a research group led by Dr. Andrew Mann dedicated to finding and studying the youngest planetary systems in the galaxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Young Worlds Lab, Dr. Andrew Mann<\/strong>
Research Partner \u2014 UNC Chapel Hill

The Young Worlds Lab<\/a> hunts for planets in the earliest stages of formation \u2014 using NASA’s TESS mission, ground-based telescopes, and custom detection algorithms to find worlds that are, cosmically speaking, newborns. Their work asks foundational questions: How quickly do planets form? What were they like before they settled into their final orbits? What can young atmospheres tell us about the origins of our own solar system?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The data, visuals, and scientific narratives throughout Hidden Lives of Stars were drawn directly from the lab’s ongoing work, including a finding that made international headlines<\/a> just before the exhibit opened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Designed Like a Lab, Not a Museum<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The central design challenge was this: how do you make frontier astrophysics feel welcoming to a seven-year-old and genuinely interesting to their parents at the same time? The answer was to lean into the lab itself \u2014 not a slick, produced version of science, but the real, messy, handwritten, coffee-stained process of discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every graphic decision was filtered through one question: does this feel like it came from a working researcher’s desk? The result is a visual language that makes hard science feel immediate and alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creative Problem-Solving on a Scrappy Budget<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Tight timelines and a lean budget meant building fast, iterating often, and trusting the collaboration. Working step-by-step with One Bit Design’s architectural vision, we developed a graphic system flexible enough to span large environmental murals and small-format instructional panels, unified throughout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than treating constraints as obstacles, they became the engine of invention. The same community-minded approach that brought university researchers into the exhibit development process shaped how the design work unfolded: honest, scrappy, and better for it. The result exceeded early expectations and has become a template for Morehead’s future exhibit development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Check out the CBS interview about this project<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Reach & Impact<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hidden Lives of Stars isn’t a temporary installation. It’s a permanent, living part of Morehead’s educational ecosystem \u2014 woven into every program, field trip, and summer camp that comes through the doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n